Air Filters – Keep It Cool and Clean

Your car runs on combustion. Small explosions within your car’s engine are the reason why your car moves forward. These explosions happen within the pistons of your engine. A little amount of car fuel is sprayed in the piston and it is lighted. This is the combustion. The small explosion will push the piston, which will spin your car’s wheels. This happens every time your car is running.

For any kind of combustion to occur, you will need air. This means that your car is constantly taking in and blowing air out when it runs. The air will go through important parts of your car. Dusts, pollens and small material will be going with the air that your car will take in. These particles may cause damage to certain parts of your car. They may not be so harmful in small amounts, but after time they will. A build up can clog valve and tubes. This is where air filters come in. They filter the air that your car sucks in.

How does it work?

These filters are not your normal kind of filters. They are certainly not as weak as the filters that you can find in your house. These filters are strong and made of material like felt. Air filters are filled with tiny holes. These holes are big enough to allow air to flow through at a decent rate. At the same time, they are too small for small particles to pass through. Some of the small particles that the filters collect are sand particles, dust and other small particles light enough to be swept by the wind.

Alternatives

You might want to change the material that your filter is made of depending on the type of terrain that your car will have to go through. This may work on a temporary basis, especially when an OEM replacement part is momentarily unavailable; but when the ordered OEM part becomes available, it should be installed at once.

One of the alternatives is to use a foam filter. Foam is thicker than paper. This means that air will have to pass through a lot more holes. There is also more space to collect small particles, which makes it good for vehicles that require heavy-duty filtering.

The other alternative is the use of oil bath filters. Oil is the main tool to clean the air that goes in the vehicle. When air enters your car, it sent through a mesh and an oil pool. Large particles like soil bits, sand, gravel and rocks are filtered by the oil because they are large enough. The smaller and finer particles that get blown in by the air are filtered by the mesh. Both of these alternatives are suitable for off-road driving since a normal filter will not be able to do the job.

As previously mentioned, these alternatives are effective as temporary replacements, but not as substitutes to OEM replacement filters that are specifically designed for specific filtering jobs.

Best in the Market

There are a lot of air filters out there in market, most are affordable. However, when it comes to quality and performance, there are filters that are highly recommended such as K&N filters. These are some of the best filters in the market. They are known for the performance that they give. Their filters are made of a combination of gaze and cotton. The filter is reinforced by an aluminum mesh. The durability of their filters is the reason why most off-road and moderate cars use them.